Craig James' Discrimination Case Isn't Nearly As Impressive As He'd Have You Think

When Fox Sports Southwest canned him last September after a single appearance, Craig James came out with guns blazing. Fox Sports had canned him because of his sincerely held and constitutionally protected religious beliefs (i.e. that gays are "going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions."). He was being persecuted, he said, and Fox was going to pay.

Rhetorically, James and his legal team at Plano-based Liberty Institute are still well-stocked with ammo. They continue to portray James -- a white, prosperous, Protestant male -- as a victim of discrimination, and, according to them, they are already racking up legal triumphs.

But James and Liberty might be overplaying their hand here just a tad. The discrimination complaint they so loudly trumpeted last week was merely the initial step in a lengthy bureaucratic process that could end in a settlement or could end in James' case getting laughed out of the Texas Workforce Commission.

Today, they're proclaiming that a "charge of discrimination" has been filed against Fox Sports, which sounds pretty serious sort of like something prosecutors file against suspected criminals, but is actually just another name for the original complaint. The only news here is that the TWC has moved on to the second step of its statutory investigative process.

It's entirely possible that Fox Sports will settle with James at some point, or that the TWC will hand him a right to sue letter, and that a court will buy his argument that a) he was fired because of his stance on gay marriage and not because he's a mediocre broadcaster detested by a considerable segment of the Fox Sports Southwest audience and b) that this is a religious belief that is protected by the constitution.